Week 5 - Difficulty by design
Growing up with parents like mine, I learned from a young age that life was not going to be easy, nor was it going to be fair. It’s a hard lesson to receive as a child, but one that resonates throughout adulthood, especially during challenging moments.
Maybe you didn’t get the promotion you were in line for, maybe your business idea didn’t pan out, or perhaps you have an injury that you can never fully recover from. Life is incredibly skilled at providing challenges in the form of a raw hand. But what the struggle of life is where the meaning of living can be found? In his book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” Viktor Frankl states, “The last of the human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances. Considering this was written by a man who spent three years in Auschwitz, the statement is entirely profound. A shift in perspective while face to face with eternity gave him the capability to endure what could arguably considered one of the closest things to hell on earth.
As I enter into the second month of my self-produced, adult, homeschool education, I face the reality that I might be losing motivation and momentum. I find myself questioning if I should continue, what will I benefit from this experience, and is the time I’m sacrificing worth the potential trade off at the end? In My experience, it has been facing questions that arise from difficult situations is where I can explore the purpose and meaning in life. Should I continue? Absolutely. What will I benefit from the experience? The skillset and experience to become the expert I hope to portray myself as. Is the trade off worth it? I believe so because I’m spending less money by focusing on myself instead of entertainment, and the opportunity to have better conversations have more inherent long term worth than the gamerscore I can accumulate on my Xbox account. All of these answers are important and relevant, however the questions are secondary to the underlying conversation I need to have with myself. Why do I want to do these things, like, REALLY? This is an introspective question that requires self reflection before answering. Why do you willingly partake in the challenge when nobody tells you that you must?
In this week’s reading material, The Myth of Sysiphus by Albert Camus, the meaning of life is explored through the act of suicide. I would imagine that for most people, it’s kind of a crazy concept, but as someone who has dealt with ideation and has planned out what I wanted to do to take my own life, the message hits pretty close to home. In facing the internal dialogue that poses the question, “Is life worth living,” you find your answer. To some, myself included for a period of time, the answer is no. Maybe it’s because the deep introspection is to challenging to find a reason, or maybe the rationality it overwhelming because of the raw hand you have personally been dealt. Having been in that headspace myself, I will never make a judgment on anyone who recognizes the world we live in as one that is too challenging to overcome. For me personally, I needed to have an external wake up call to force me into introspection. Odd as it may seem, it was Robin Williams’ passing that made me realize how close to the edge I had been, and I sought out help. I recognized that I had spent the past year in the wrong relationship, on a career path that was not pursuing anything that brought me joy, and I was simply existing for a weekend that didn’t include many friends. I had to look at my life as an observer before I could ask myself the question, “What is life living for?” My answer surprised me. Relationships. I wanted to build community, I wanted to work with my hands, I wanted to have relationships that lasted longer than single interactions.
This realization that I was on the wrong path, and an understanding that I needed to make a change, were the forces that allowed me to make a series of challenging decisions. I quit my job. I filed bankruptcy to put my finances in order so I could go to school. I got my education and began a new life. It was terrifying, and it was more challenging than anything I had experienced up to that point in my life, but it was equally rewarding. I could see myself becoming the person that I wanted to see in life, and I was also able to recognize that my individual existence, insignificant as it might be to others, had found meaning to the person living it. A decade later, I am now in a place where I recognize that if a challenge is placed in front of me, I am excited to see the transformation of self the experience will provide, and how it will shape my future self for when I have an ability to look back and see the changes externally.
So I come back to my original thought, facing challenge allows an opportunity to reflect internally and ask the hard questions of yourself surrounding purpose and meaning. The meaning of life will always be unique to those choosing to live it, and for those who are still seeking definition, I hope they find themselves in a place of adversity. Not because I want them to struggle, but because I want them to be provided with the opportunity to see how they can shape themselves into their most authentic selves. Life may be absurd, but in the absurdity and in the depths of despair, we can find that life is most oftentimes still worth living.
